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UWP ​

Before 1.21.120, Minecraft was built with UWP, which was Microsoft's attempt at unifying projects built for desktop Windows, Xbox, and Windows Phone under one platform. UWP is considered to be a deprecated platform (since October 2021), and was not ideal for developing games. These are possible reasons as to why Mojang decided to move the game to GDK.

Key differences ​

Compared to regular Win32 apps, UWP apps:

  • run in a sandbox, and cannot access files outside of their application data directories by default
  • use WinRT exclusively instead of the regular Win32 APIs

DLL injection ​

When injecting your mod into UWP builds of the game, it's important that the DLL file has the ALL_APPLICATION_PACKAGES permission so the game can access its contents. This is why we recommend Fate Injector, as it is specifically designed for the UWP builds and applies this permission before injecting.

WinRT vs Win32 ​

When developing for UWP, you are required to use WinRT to interface with the operating system. As a result, the WinRT APIs should be preferred over their Win32 counterparts when creating your mod, as most do not work inside of a UWP app. For example, setting the window title is much different within UWP:

cpp
// Win32, assuming UNICODE is defined
#include <Windows.h>

HWND handle = FindWindow(nullptr, L"Minecraft");
SetWindowText(handle, L"My window title");

// WinRT
#include <winrt/windows.ui.viewmanagement.h>
using namespace winrt;
using namespace Windows::UI::ViewManagement;

ApplicationView::GetForCurrentView().Title(L"My window title");

TIP

Most WinRT functions must be ran on the main thread:

cpp
#include <winrt/windows.applicationmodel.core.h>
#include <winrt/windows.ui.core.h>

using namespace winrt;
using namespace Windows::ApplicationModel::Core;
using namespace Windows::UI::Core;

CoreApplication::MainView().CoreWindow().Dispatcher().RunAsync(
    CoreDispatcherPriority::Normal, []{ ... }
);